Violence

I saw this poster on the bus today. In case you can’t make it out, there is an image of a punchbag set in a dishevelled kitchen, and the caption says:”A domestic violence victim will be beaten 20 times in the next year, unless a friend stops it sooner” with a line at the bottom saying “Enough. Call the National Domestic Violence Helpline for support.”

I did think for a horrified moment that this might be a campaign sponsored by Women’s Aid and/or Refuge, who I think run the helpline. It’s not. Surprise! It’s the Home Office.

There’s another similar poster where the image and main caption are the same, but the sub-caption reads: “If your friend is being hit, she’s probably too scared to do anything to stop it. So her beatings will just go on and on. Help her take the first step, call the National Domestic Violence Helpline for support.”

Just who is doing the beating here?
These women – sorry, not “women”, “domestic violence victims” – are magically getting beaten by – who?
As usual in the case of crimes against women, the perpetrator drops out of the limelight.

I do get that a campaign encouraging friends to support those who are being abused has a place. I do get that perpetrators often seek to isolate their partners, to cut them off from the friends who may help them to escape – that encouraging friends to see through what is going on, encouraging friends to take an active role in helping victims is, on the whole, a good thing.

But.

Why do we have a campaign telling a woman’s friends that they are responsible for “stopping” the violence when they can do nothing to stop the violence and can only offer support to the victim who might otherwise feel or actually be unable to escape? And why don’t we have a campaign targeted at men to just stop hitting and abusing women? And why don’t we have a campaign targeted at men to stop their friends from hitting and abusing women? And why is it always the women (and her friends) who get the spotlight, when the people who actually can stop the violence, or influence the perpetrator to stop the violence, are offstage somewhere, overlooked?

Is it that we feel these men are so far beyond the pale, so monstrously twisted, so clearly unhinged that no campaign or well-meaning friend could possibly influence them to modify their behaviour? Because that aint so. Men who beat and abuse their partners are human beings, just like us. Human beings, not monsters. Maybe when we search our souls for solutions to the problem of domestic violence we should ask ourselves fewer questions about how we can help women to escape and a great deal more about why these men commit this violence and what can be done to make them stop.

What is the consequence of placing an individual at the head of a closed family, of giving him authority to rule and guide his family, the family that is his?

What is the consequence of giving Woman in submission to Man? Of placing children, his children under his absolute care and control as the head of his household?

What is the consequence of empowering Man and, as a corollary, disempowering his family, his woman, his children? Allowing him to rule and guide through the mechanisms of submission, obedience – control.

Is it, sometime, abuse? Could we, perhaps, expect that abuse will happen almost inevitably as a result of such a family structure?

So should we be surprised if, sometimes, the consequence is that a man in control of his disempowered family can lock up a daughter in a place where nobody can hear her scream or see her bleed? That he can keep her there, utterly dependent on him for survival, a prisoner for twenty-four years, twenty-four years, as he rapes her and rapes her and rapes her. Repeated sexual abuse my arse. He raped and raped and raped his own daughter. Should we be surprised that he could impregnate her repeatedly, and keep her imprisoned, alone through her pregnancies and labours, imprisoning her children with her, the children of his rapes and rapes and rapes – should we be surprised that this happened? Horrified, yes, of course horrified. But can we really be surprised that this happens?

Should we be surprised that a man capable of such systematic, long term abuse, such cleverly designed, coldly planned cruelty can keep his abuse a secret? From neighbours, friends, associates. From his own family, his own wife, the people living in his house, with him and his imprisoned daughter and his imprisoned (grand)children, the fruit of his shocking, incestuous rapes… is it really so surprising that a man who can do this to his daughter and his (grand)children can control his other family members to the extent that they also knew nothing of what he did in the basement.

How he did it we can only speculate. Perhaps he ruled them with terror, perhaps with violence, perhaps with drugs or alcohol, perhaps he wore them away until they lost themselves and didn’t know even so much as the day of the week. We can only guess.

Why he did it is not guessable – we can say no more than that he did it because he could.
Why is it that he could?
See above.

Or, to put it another way: what about the wife, eh? The mother! How could she not have known what was going on in her own house? You can’t keep something like that secret from your wife! She must have known. It just seems so terrible, her own daughter. Mm. Hey, did you see O’Sullivan’s 147 last night?

Even a single mother who was merely guilty of feeding her children cheap protein can be harangued on national television by an Eton-educated chef for supporting the abuse of domestic fowl. Crack-smoking hookers with their raddled complexions, tarty clobber and children in care are not as heart-breakingly cutesy as baby piggies peeping through crates, drowning polar bears, or even chickens. But surely we can find an ethical champion in the wake of the Ipswich murders to tell men not to spend their money on prostitutes?…

Punters have doubled in a decade: now one in ten British men has visited a prostitute. And really why not, when even glossier men’s magazines give the message that vice is nice, advise how stag weekenders can buy firm young booty in Tallinn or Budapest, when lap-dancing clubs are mainstream fun – from “private dance” to upstairs shag being a blurry line – when omnipresent internet porn feeds a sense of male entitlement to every unfettered whim. Now the sex trade has rebranded itself a wing of the leisure industry, moral disapproval has evaporated and men can concentrate on getting value for money with websites like punternet.com on hand to assist…

[W]e are told by those (mostly men) who fear a Swedish-style criminalisation of punters, that there are many prostitutes, neither coerced nor addicted, who relish their chosen profession. “Happy hookers”: that hoary old male fantasy of women who get pleasure, even multi-orgasmic joy if you believe the deluded fools on punternet, from being paid for sex is periodically fed by fictional callgirls, most recently Billie Piper in Belle de Jour, with her classy clients and La Perla undies.

But this horny imagining clashes with the reality of a trade that 89 per cent dream of escaping. And indeed schemes to assist prostitutes getting off the game – and the drugs – have many takers…

But men who use prostitutes need the happy hooker. Those with a semblance of a conscience seek reassurance that buying their jollies is hurting no one. The happy hooker, like the happy chicken, can be consumed without guilt…

While the Government is right to evaluate further whether the Swedish model leads to a true reduction of prostitution, or whether it is driven into deeper, more dangerous, places, one thing is certainly true: criminalising the buying of sex at least states categorically that it is not normal or acceptable, but, since it is incompatible with human dignity, morally wrong. And that is what we need to tell our young men but never do. Why are we hand-wringing moral relativists about women but not chickens? Why, at the very least, are punters not branded the most unethical consumers of all?

[Emphasis mine.]

Yep. Just keep your gagging goggles on for the comments.

PS – Yes, that’s a frog on a hat. Cute isn’t she? Tarty-clobbered crack-smoking hooker (complete with raddled complexion and child in care) to follow? Does anyone have a pattern?

Meanwhile, I’d just like to share this article with you as it filled me with a little hope when I read it yesterday. It is about the visit of Vernon Coaker (Home Office minister) to a pro-Swedish-model conference on sex trafficking in which he made some really encouraging statements about the possible forthcoming step-change in Government thinking about men who buy women for sex.

[Vernon Coaker] told a packed conference hall… that the time had come for a major cultural shift in Britain regarding prostitution and sex trafficking. He said:

“One of the vilest crimes that threatens our society is the trafficking of human beings. This modern day slavery is an evil practice, perpetrated for profit with no regard for the consequences for the victims or society as a whole. It is often the product of organised criminality that knows no borders and that feeds on the exploitation of the vulnerable.

“Some men might question perspective a man can bring to leading the government’s agenda of dealing with these awful crimes. For me, the fact that the victims are women, and sometimes children, and that the crimes are very often perpetrated by men, makes it even more important that men should be taking some responsibility for the solution. As a result, I’ve taken a strong personal interest in this issue.”…

“It is time to wake up to human rights in the 21st century. How come in the 21st century that trafficking for sexual exploitation is one of the fastest growing areas of global trade, amassing hundreds of thousands of pounds for those involved, and being fuelled by a growing demand for casual sex for payment with no societal accountability?… The time has now come that we simply have to pay attention to the demand which is driving the engine of this abuse…

Sweden’s pioneering legislation in 1999 has enabled the world to take a fresh look at the way governments and society can address the multiple abuses involved in purchasing sex. With a standard fine or a maximum imprisonment of six months for the offence, hundreds of men in Sweden have been prosecuted to date, and more importantly attitudes have been significantly altered – particularly amongst the purchasing target group – 20-55 year old males.

This is in stark contrast to Germany where legalisation of prostitution has triggered an extraordinary increase in demand, with one survey returning a statistic of 1.2 million German men daily purchasing sex…

“We need to take steps now in our general culture, legislation, education and media to properly inform one another of the real human costs of purchasing people for sex in our contemporary world.”

In view of the flurry of posts today – HT Grace, Debs, Sparkle, all worth a read if you feel like sharing a bit of righteous anger – on a new government campaign to raise awareness (ahem, like nobody thinks this already) that women who drink are to blame for being raped because 1 out of 3 rapes happens after a woman has been drinking…

You may recall that I have blogged previously about the “Qatif girl” case (see here, here, here and here) in which a young Saudi woman was gang raped and then sentenced to 200 lashes and 6 months in prison for her part in the crime.

I wrote at the time to my MP asking him to find out what was up with the British government, who were strangely quiet and had expressed no public condemnation of these events. My MP promptly wrote to the foreign office and at last a reply has been forthcoming. Kim Howells (minister responsible for relations with Saudi Arabia) says:

“The UK Government raised the case with Saudi authorities. The facts to hand on this case are disturbing. We urged the Saudi authorities to review the case again. We understand that King Abdullah has granted a Royal pardon to the victim.

We remain concerned to hear that the victim’s lawyer will be brought before a disciplinary committee for defending the case. The committee may decide to suspend or revoke his licence to practice law. Our Embassy in Riyadh continues to monitor this case.

The UK Government remains concerned about the overall human rights situation in Saudi Arabia, including discrimination against women, non-Muslims, homosexuals, the retrictions on freedom of expression, movement, assembly and worship, the implementation of UN human righst instruments and issues relating to the judicial process.

The UK Government is committed to improving human rights in Saudi Arabia and have intertwined and inseparable interests: in our economies, in the fight against global terrorism and in regional stability. However, this relationship does not reduce our commitment to human rights or prevent us from raising difficult issues with the Saudi Authorities.”

Kim Howells suggested that we see also www.fco.gov.uk. The only thing on there of much interest in relation to KSA is this state visit FAQ prepared last October when King Abdullah came to visit the Queen in London.

A brief update on the “Qatif girl”, the 19 year old woman who was sentenced to 90 and then 200 lashes and 6 months imprisonment following her gang rape, because the rape happened after she had been sitting in a car with a man (who was also kidnapped and raped along with her) who was not a relative of hers. See my posts here, here and here for more details.

The BBC and ABC are reporting that the king has pardoned the Qatif girl. There is no information about whether the man, who was also sentenced to 90 lashes, has been pardoned. The Saudi justice ministry’s official position is that this pardon does not affect the justice or legality of the conviction and sentence. Apparently the king is being criticised within Saudi Arabia for bending to “foreign interference”. Well yay for foreign interference, and boo for the Saudi justice ministry.

Meanwhile, I had a fairly prompt response from my MP when I wrote asking what the government position is on this case, expressing appropriate shock and dismay about the case and saying that he had written to David Milliband to answer the actual question. I have not heard anything more. Not yet.